BBC Elder Q & A

I feel so small down here. We had a big laugh in our household this afternoon about when I was reading Pilate and for some reason this morning my mind just said pirate and I have not seen the new Pirates movie but my mind was just on pirates for some reason so Pirate Bible Church.

Church Growth and the Biblical Pattern of Increase

Just to give you a little discussion about church growth and how churches grow I'll teach the positive by first talking about the negative. I was in Santa Cruz and I found this little ad it's got a picture of a surfboard with the word deliverance on it and it says a new spin on recovery.

This is an ad for church and it says music message and skits. Come experience twelve steps like you've never seen them before. We offer upbeat services that won't put you to sleep. Thursday nights at seven p .m.

So how do you grow a church? Well you can have upbeat services. The other one that you received an email from me this Friday this is not a joke I got a good email from Bob Bowman about this. This is hymnsandhounds .com a dog friendly church.

It's popular due to our meeting place moving and not having enough room for us services will be on hold till further notice. It says here would you like to be able to go to church but your pooch pouts because you'd have to leave your faithful companion alone again after being gone during the week.

Or you just like to enjoy your puppy pals company while you worship. Now there is a solution. Come and enjoy a truly special and unique church service. I would agree with that. Where you and your canine friend etc etc services are currently being held on the second Sunday of each month at four p .m.

Sermon topics relating to humans and their dog will be given by minister and retired professional dog trainer D Renda followed by the yappy hour with refreshments. On the website it also says Psalm 150 verse 1 let everything that has breath praise the Lord.

For the safety of all please make sure your dogs are leashed not all dogs may be as friendly as yours. I mean what do you say to that? You can grow a church any way you'd like to. You can offer people five dollars a week if they'll come.

You could offer them ten dollars if they'll bring a friend. But how does the Lord's Church grow? After all it is Christ's Church and he tells us what we should know about how to make that church grow.

Yes? He ordains growth and he ordains the way it should grow. And so if you just take your Bibles to the book of Acts in the next five minutes or so we're just going to take a little survey of about ten statements where God's church grows and it always grows to the same format and that format is the unadulterated systematic preaching of God's mind revelation from God his word is being proclaimed either as it comes to the Apostles into their mind directly or now since we're removed from the Apostles we have the apostolic writings and then we proclaim those writings that perform their work in Christians lives according to 1st Thessalonians chapter 2 verse 13 and so when I see the survey of church growth I'm encouraged because there are all kinds of antagonists against the church, Satan, the world, demons, ourselves, but God, Christ Jesus builds his church and nothing will stop that and I just reviewed these this afternoon and was very encouraged Acts 241 if you don't have a Bible I'll just read them I will not give you context for each because that will take too long but Acts 241 so then those who received his word were baptized and that day were added about 3 ,000 souls they hear the word God saves them.

Verse 47 of the same chapter praising God and having favor with all the people and the Lord was adding you notice that the Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved Acts chapter 4 verse 4 please and again we're going to look at about 10 verses just quickly to remind you that God grows his church in number here and certainly in maturation as well but focused here more on number.

Acts 4 4 but many of those who had heard the message believed tying again the word and the number of the men came to be about 5 ,000. What a great message that must have been. Chapter 5 verse 14 if you will and all the more believers in the Lord multitudes of men and women were constantly added to their number added by another.

This is a passive kind of verb at least theologically and someone does that to the church and it is God adding to that number. Chapter 6 verse 17 as we see again just a quick tour of these verses where God adds to the church with that I say 617 there's no such thing I've just seen.

If you were paying attention I wrote 617 down. I wonder what I meant 67. The word of God kept on spreading and the number of disciples continued to increase greatly in Jerusalem and a great many of the priests were becoming obedient to the faith.

So that would be 67 instead. Chapter 9 verse 31. Just a few more acts 931. So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria of all places enjoyed peace being built up and going on in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit.

It continued to increase. Acts 1224. Please 1224 says. But the word of the Lord continued to grow and to be multiplied. Acts 1348 and 49. Very familiar verses to those of you who study the decrees of God and which comes first.

And when the Gentiles heard this they began rejoicing acts 1348 and glorifying the word of the Lord. They would not understand when people say oh you worship the Bible the Bible and the word of God the Bible rather the word of God and Christ are here glorifying the word of the Lord.

And as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed. And the word of the Lord was being spread through the whole region. And remember this is in the time of persecution. It's very very difficult.

Yet it still continues. And two more sets of verses. Acts 16 5. Acts 16 5. So the churches were being strengthened in the faith and were increasing in number daily. And then lastly acts 19. I'll read a larger section here since it's the last set of verses.

I have acts 1911. One of my favorite sections of scripture. God was performing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul so that the handkerchiefs or aprons were even carried from his body to the sick and the diseases left them and the evil spirits went out now.

That is power apostolic power. PS. If you ever see handkerchiefs on sale for $50 love gift on TBN do not send money in because they are just hucksters. But also some of the Jewish exorcists who went from place to place attempted to name over those who had the evil spirits the name of the Lord Jesus saying I adjure you by Jesus whom Paul preaches.

Can you imagine that seven sons of one skiva a Jewish chief priest were doing this. They should have known better and the evil spirit and answered and said to them I recognize Jesus and I know about Paul but who are you.

I would love to have seen their faces and the man in whom was the evil spirit leaped on them. If they weren't scared earlier they're scared now and subdued all of them and overpower them so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded.

This became known to all. You bet it did. Both Jews and Greeks who lived in Ephesus and fear fell upon them all and the name of the Lord Jesus was being magnified. Many also of those who had believed kept coming confessing and disclosing their practices.

When God begins to move on the heart of people there's repentance. And many of those who practice magic brought their books together and began burning them in the sight of everyone and they counted up the price of them and found at 50 ,000 pieces of silver.

So the word of the Lord was growing mightily and prevailing. God grows his church. Is there anything wrong with an increase in the number of people as God gives the increase. We're quick here to say we want church growth.

That's the maturation of people. But you see a theme here of the theme of God adding people to the church. Certainly nothing wrong with that. When would that be a bad thing though if the gospel is not being clearly presented people getting saved from that what they don't know unto someone they haven't heard.

Yes if they're using some kind of hounds and hymns method or something like that that's right. But church growth in and of itself is not bad. I want the church to grow in the sense that I would love to see people my own children those who aren't saved some of your children aren't saved the visitors that you bring and those of you who are attend who are not Christians.

If God saves you do. I will like that kind of growth absolutely. But it is God who decides it is God's plan at his timing according to his reasons. And so it is our job as an elder board to do only one thing and that is not add to the church.

That is to proclaim the truth that God uses to add people to the church. Yes if we shrink down to 50 people are we balloon up to 5 ,000 people. We are not allowed to change our philosophy of ministry and what we believe about the word I mean I hope we do start shrinking down even more than 50.

If we start changing just to keep people are changing because people like to hear a certain kind of message. So as you have noticed if you haven't been looking around lately on Sunday morning our place this building you know we are the church but the building that we meet in is jam-packed.

Last year one week ago there were 169 people here and last week there were 239 people here. So it doesn't take much math to figure out. That's a 35 increase or so roughly. And so we as elders want to be good stewards that if we don't change the gospel message and God is bringing more people here that are either new Christians or they have had to leave their own church for biblical reasons ie they're not preaching the Bible etc.

Then we want to make sure we can accommodate the people who come. We want everybody who wants to hear the word expositionally preached to be able to come here. Yes. And then we want the church building to accommodate that.

So we've really been thinking as a church eldership board and we had the deacons in on Thursday. What do we do about this building. Because we're slowly outgrowing the building so we've examined all kinds of things the parking lot to services new real estate.

Do you buy a different church. Do you rent a Seventh-day Adventist Church. Do you buy the price chopper and turn it into a church building. What do we do. And we now as an elder board are convinced that the wherever the Lord will lead us we will go.

We don't have anything in mind in particular in terms of buying land because we don't have any money but God owns a lot of money. But we just wanted to make the announcement tonight that dear church we want you to be ready as the Lord will open and close doors and will give us money or not give us money that we're going to have to be prepared to have people especially in two weeks right.

This week is still vacation. I could think of a bunch of families who weren't here this Sunday. Next week is the three-day weekend but the weekend after that the college students will be back. Everybody else will be back.

And what do we do with such a building. I'm thankful that we have a building. I'm thankful that the Lord has given us a place where we don't have to meet in in some kind of moose lodge or Elks retreat.

Where do we used to meet Masonic. How do you explain that to your friends. We're meeting in the Masonic Lodge and so we want to just say we are not going to change our philosophy of ministry but we are going to have to let the congregation know.

Something is going to have to happen. Because if we keep going like this I mean we're one sermon away from 50 people leaving the church right. That's always a possibility. But if we continue to have 35 growth what in fact are we going to do.

And we want you all to be ready for whatever decisions the elders with the deacons input and the congregations input would necessitate. So without any further ado we do have some ideas Steve or Dave you want to give the congregation kind of an idea of what we're thinking some proactive steps and how they could be involved before I.

Just go in a monologue I'll hit it a couple. I had a couple we talked about of course that in order to stay in this building we'd need more seating capacity and there's a lot of homework that needs to be done.

As far as what is the capacity that can we can actually have in here inside the building there's the the idea of the parking lot as far as we've asked the deacons to take a look at the plot plan of the parking lot and to and to stripe it out to figure out a way how could we best and most efficiently use the parking lot because that is the we can we can get seats in here but we can't get cars in the parking lot.

That's usually that's going to be our first bottleneck. Other ideas that we've had we could use the building from Sunday evening all the way through Saturday for everything that we do like for a wanna the different studies that take that go on in the building but on Sunday morning possibly rent out another building for just the Sunday morning because that's where we have the the biggest influx in the folks coming attending.

Another idea that we looked at we kind of walked out walked it out on Thursday would be in some of you have already heard this is to flip the sanctuary. I'll call this room the sanctuary and that would be that where Brian is behind you up there that that little extension there would be extended a little bit further and Mike would or whoever would be preaching from up there the church chairs would be turned around where we're sitting here would be chairs and on the stage would be chairs and up in the choir loft would be chairs for a seating capacity and we would need to relocate the the sound booth the sound equipment course all of this needs to be checked out.

We've got to just you know do the proper and necessary homework for for safety for fire code and what makes sense for us and what we. And of course if we did something like that we want to do it with expense trying to keep the expenses down of course outright sell the building possibility if we could take and put the building on the market and see what we would get get for it and then look for a piece of land to build upon or a place like Mike had said where there's a building that we could gut and renovate and that would would suit us.

There's a lot of different options but the most important thing for us to do is not to hurry to do the the right thing to to pray about it to seek the Lord in it and to be praying as a body so that so that we do the right thing and we don't overextend ourselves.

But I agree when all of us have talked about this that what a tremendous problem to have. Really it's a good problem to be able to be in New England preaching the Word of God teaching it as it is and not watering it not cutting the corners not clipping the message.

The Lord Jesus never trimmed his message to meet the people he was always clipping away at the people trimming them and working on men's hearts through his word and praise God he's allowed us to be here to be able to do just that to teach the word to be faithful to the entrustment that we've had to be good stewards of the gospel and and then see something we what we pray for God to do something wonderful to surprise us to perform that which I think Jeremiah put it this way in Jeremiah 33 3 I think it is calling to me and I will answer thee and show thee great and mighty things which thou knowest not things which we've not seen in a course in Ephesians chapter 3 that God is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we could ask or think and we're seeing it before our eyes if you're having a hard time sitting or finding a seat and I know I stood up in the back just this morning just to see what it was like and the ushers are scrambling at times to find a place for someone to sit.

But it's a wonderful problem to have and it's and it's really all to the glory of God's mighty hand on our behalf I don't know Steve or if anybody else has a alternative that we.

Thought of yeah one of the other things we talked about was if things go as we foresee them going and we have difficulties here in a couple of weeks that if that continues and we don't chase them away somehow that what we would look to do by the first of November is locate a commercial real estate agent and put this piece of property on the market for sale now.

That doesn't mean that you know in the first of November it goes up for sale. The second of November we get an offer and we're left without any place to go. The game plan would be that we would very carefully consider our options concerning selling it and also have the real estate agent looking for a place that we could buy.

So I mean it could be that we we could have to run a place for a while but whatever we do we're going to have a plan in place so that we're you know not left wandering the wilderness for 40 years. So we basically and you know just to kind of summarize what we've all said here but we haven't really gotten right down to it as most of you know because of the regulations concerning this piece of property we're pretty much maxed out.

There really isn't a whole lot that we can do. We can't add for example you know let's say we wanted to run build some additional seating up here and even if we could get it past the fire code we could have no additional bathrooms because we're maxed out and in in terms of what they will allow us to to do for septic there are a lot of restrictions on this property.

We can't really expand the parking lot. There are a lot of issues so you come to a point where you just go well if we continue to grow we have to find a place to go and that's what we're going to look into whether that's a renovating a Kmart or whatever it is.

We have to start looking and we need somebody a real estate agent to start considering what.

Our options would be I think this would be a good time to say this if any of you about 200 million two million dollars in the bank you've been waiting for a strategic time to give to the church. Now would be that time.

We don't know what the building's worth. Scott says the assessor believes it's worth about a million the property in the in the building and so it cannot be sold except to another nonprofit or church and so we don't even know if anyone would come by and buy it in the next three years or not.

But we certainly can't buy a 1 .5 million dollar piece of property with the 45 ,000 we have in the bank now and so if somebody gives us an offer we don't have to sign the papers but we can. If it takes us three years to sell the church it might be a good time to start now is what we're thinking.

And so whether that is some some of the deacons said well what about moving to Auburn. Some have said what about the 290 in the 140. Steve and Scott Goddard went to look at some property there. We don't really know where we're going to go but it needs to be someplace centrally located because we have some driving from Gardner and some driving from where's Pat Gordon Connecticut.

And Dave you drive from Connecticut too. I keep telling them we should go to Lemonster right up there on the but wherever we go we just want to be open to that and yeah that's right. So we don't really know where to go and we want to make sure we're wise.

We're going to do a few other things. We're going to mark out the parking lot with yellow paint so we'll actually have slots because now we kind of all just park every which way. I've asked Bob you low and Scott Goddard to see if we can put more crushed stone out in the back.

You say well why can't we go to two services. That two service problem is not alleviated by one main thing and that is the parking lot. It also creates kind of two different church structures typically church growth.

People say this when the sanctuary is 80 full start another service and we've done that once here. How many people were here when we went to two services. Keeping your hands up. How many people liked it when we went to two.

Okay I mean we just want. Will we will. We say we'll never do it. No but we might have to go to the West Boylston movie theater. We'll meet there on Sunday mornings to get the 350 or 400 people in instead of going to two services.

Type of thing. We don't really know exactly what we want to do but we want you to be ready to do a several few things. Number one pray that the Lord would direct us into a piece of property that we could afford.

Just because that piece of property is 1 .5 million it doesn't mean that we have to have 1 .5 million to do it either. God can give us the money. Are those people can lower their prices down. Some churches have given their property way because they've been an old faithful church that has died up and they're just looking to give it away to an evangelical organization.

We've talked about planting another church someplace. Do we take about 25 or 30 of you with a pastor and plant a church. We've discussed that as well. I don't think we'll do that right away but everything's out on the table and we're going to need you to help us.

We're gonna probably need six men on a Sunday. Ladies can help too if they'd like you can have like orange construction things on helping for parking we may we could do first in first out parking. Maybe we can you know double park all kinds of things.

We want to make sure that nobody drives in here and says I'd really like to come be fed the Word of God but I can't find a parking place. And so if this place cannot help us then we want to look elsewhere.

Another illustration of how flexible we'd like to be is what if we can keep this building but the Lord gives us another building too and so it's a Juana high school ministry homeschool ministry and a church school here and then we have our worship services at another place in administrative offices or something whatever the Lord would like to do but something's gonna have to give and we need to make some decisions quickly or else we're going to be turning people away.

220 seats can sit here. I think we have about 220 now. We could put 34 on the stage without breaking fire code and we could put about 50 up in the balcony without breaking fire code. So we can have about 80 more people in here than we did this morning and then after that we're done.

If you take 35 growth to the 250 that we now have attending even in the summer what does that come out to be Nate. And so we run into many problems. And again it is a great problem to have. It is great to see God where whether ever that's whether that's in New England or in Somalia.

When you preach the word people respond. And so we just want to be flexible. We want to let you know what we're thinking. Sometimes people have said well the elders don't communicate what's going on. We really never say to ourselves.

We're four tight-knit guys and we don't talk to people and it's for us to know and you to find out. We really we never have those kind of meetings but maybe just by not having times like this you may think that's what we do.

And so we want to make sure we're just very open. Many of you have poured your life into this building. Chuck strong. Fred Tebow. Charlie was up on those rafters I heard without a safety belt for many years or many months many years pirate Bible Church.

And and so as the Lord has given us this building if it will no longer accommodate us then we'll look elsewhere. But as we put it up on the market in November if we keep growing that does not mean we have to sell it.

That does not mean it's over here. That does not mean the first buyer who comes. We have to take the money. And so we want to make sure you you don't think we're going to be walking around in transit not knowing what to do.

The new homeschool co-op in month on Mondays and Cheryl's thinking well what am I going to do. That will all be found out because we can determine escrow times. It's gonna have to be another church who buys this place anyway.

Most likely because it is zone residential and you can't have some kind of manufacturing plant in here. So it's gonna have to be God's perfect timing. We've talked about. Do we sell it to a non-christian church.

Do we if the Buddhists want to buy it. Do we sell it to the Buddhists. Do we send it to sell it to Hindu organization. What would we do. And so we've tried to think through the general outline but not the specific details.

So unless Lewis has anything maybe he can answer the first couple questions. Do you congregation have any concerns. You have any questions. Would you like to offer any input. Now would be a good time to do that.

You can just come right up to the microphone or you can just stand where you are and I'll repeat the question. Yes. Bruce. Yes the Bruce behind you. Okay. Good question. Bruce to repeat the question for the congregation.

Could we increase the size of the septic so we could increase the restroom size. And if I remember Scott Goddard correctly. The answer to that is no. We are maxed on the.

Septic system. We do want a bridge that stays up though. I'm sorry could you.

Finish that sentence Bruce because you have good wisdom in these areas and I.

Want to lose that thought yes okay thank you. That's right very good thank.

You well right now through the summer our giving has been about a hundred dollars a week over what we budgeted which at seventy five hundred dollars a month approximately. That's pretty good giving over the summer.

And so as I used to say to the congregation the good news is when I got here nobody was a huge giver that is to say nobody had millions and millions of dollars. Who could say Mike if you need a million you just let me know.

And as a new pastor I think it was the Lord's mercy and not having me have to deal with someone like that. Because what if I preached against something that person didn't like and they withheld the million dollars in giving.

And so the good news is we didn't have somebody who had millions to give. The bad news is we didn't have someone who could give millions. And so I think we as a congregation give. Well mature Christians give.

They give sacrificially and that will only increase our fixed costs remain the same. We'd have to talk about maybe adding another pastoral staff person as time goes on. But we don't have enough money even with a hundred and fifty thousand coming from the state to put down a huge down payment to buy another piece of land let alone land in the building.

Unless we have this asset the church and this land to be able to buy the other one unless we want to do short-term we meet down at West Boylston movie theater on Sunday morning theater three for worship services and we fit 400 people in there.

Many have done that many have gone to let's say West Boylston high school and you have the amphitheater there that holds 350 with the seats are there. We just bring in the sound system and the congregation.

We meet there on Sundays but we still have a one here on Wednesdays and there's lots of other things we could do and we'll try to do something like that before going to two services because it really is not very healthy for the church to have the two services.

The older people tend to come to the first service because they don't have kids to get ready and the families come to the second service. You just don't get to do the one and others as well and so it's just not the best.

I'm willing to do it but I really don't want to. Okay. Other questions. Yes. Oh Frank that's a good point. What I would say is this is probably what we should all be ready for in the short term. Let's see what happens September 10th and two Sundays how many people show up.

Please congregation if you see a family of four who are visitors and you have your spots all lined up that you quickly reserve because you were obedient to God's will and came for Sunday school and you were there.

That's a good motivation to come to Sunday school. We can't get seats in us. We do. If you've got extra seats and you see that family would you please give those up and we can set you on the metal chairs.

We really want to show that we love other people and one of the ways we show love is when it costs us and so moving around and sitting certain places please be ready to do that because we would not want to have people to come and say I really want to hear God's Word.

We had a visitor who sat right back here this morning in his name was Emil and he used to attend Dan Rathbun's father's church in Lowell and so it was really neat to talk to him and he said I'm really glad the church is friendly.

He had cookies and many of you were talking to him and his daughter thank you for that. But he was mature and he said if nobody's friendly at the church but I get fed the Word of God. That's the kind of church I go to.

But remember we deal with people who aren't always that mature and they only come to churches because well I get the Word of God but I get friends and nice people and I'm lonely all week and I need support those kind of people we minister to as well and we're called to minister to and so for the weak ones who come and would say I'm never coming back because I can't find a seat.

Please get up and give your seats to those folks. Maybe we need to have you know the dads quick get up and get the kids moved over. Maybe for those of you kids who are dismissed for junior church maybe you could sit on your mom and dad's laps before junior church is dismissed.

There's lots of things we could do to Bruce's point. I think what we'll see quickly is Scott Goddard and a crew. For those of you who are fairly new to the church and want to serve Scott could probably use your help with the parking lot.

Then we have a parking lot crew of men serving that will have the yellow lines there so we can park in there that will look at extending that little pulpit up there I'm gonna feel like preaching up there.

We'll have to figure out lights and sound room. The stage area is easy because we can just put 30 chairs up there. We might have to invest a little money building the choir loft with rising seats so people could sit and see down.

It's pretty. If you stand up there you can see the pulpit pretty easily and so that could all happen pretty quickly without much money being spent. Because if we're going to move then why put a bunch more money into the now.

But I think that could happen pretty fast being flipped around. I don't know what to do to acoustics but that's Charlie's 40 baptisms would be at nighttime and we would just have them here. We'd flip the sanctuary around.

Again the baptisms would be here. In the baptismal. Yes I think that'd be a good.

Idea so if the ushers could take note of that we could have a little ropes little where they have the kind of little rope deals. Yeah reserved. I think you'll start seeing some visitor parking sections out there so we'll keep those things to the very last minute at 1030 we'll fill them up with people of our own membership but until then you'll say visitor you know we'd like you to honor that but that's a good point mark.

We could. The way the risers are there. Only standing risers so you could sit to the front and kind of lean over a little bit. I like it that we have a choir loft in the old Puritan churches. The choir loft was in the back of the church because you know I've seen choirs at Grace Church and it was neat.

There was 300 people and I'd say oh she got a new haircut today and and oh that guy's robes too tight. And you know just things that I think about that I don't want to think about. But if I don't want to think about him and I do then everybody else does too.

Maybe I shouldn't have told you because now you will think about it. It would be nice to have a choir in the back singing to help with congregational singing. It will also make it easier if I'm preaching from that end to have the people sitting there because if you're listening to me preach and then there's somebody up in the balcony who's had a long night and they're falling asleep or whatever it might be.

We want to be careful but we can put people up there right now if we'd like. That's right. If I preach too long and they fall down we'll have to remember that I'm not an apostle for.

Recitation. Charlie or is it if Charlie first and then Doug. Yeah the the. That's certainly possible. Technically there's not a problem there. The problem you run into with every solution like that is the parking lot that's always the the elephant in the room is that there's still a limitation on how many cars you can get in the parking lot and even with striping and all the rest of it and we've talked about ideas like we might actually park cars just right up against each other and you know you just have to wait until the folks that got in after you left.